How Stella Bossi Stole Her First Big DJ Gig
Stella Bossi has been tearing up clubs across Europe since the lockdown ended and most recently brought her banging techno and vivacious party energy to Latin America. Next spring, she'll be making her North American debut. But before being an in-demand DJ, she had a vision to literally steal the show.
Bossi, through a machine, tells the story to Jess Bowen and Bowie Jane on the April 7th episode of their Babes Behind the Beats podcast. When she was invited to a party in Berlin attended by the who's-who of German media, she knew she had to figure out a way to take over the decks, even though she wasn't booked to DJ.
At this point in her career, she'd only DJed private parties and small underground clubs but had yet to play to an audience of over 50 people. She decided to take the opportunity to throw down in front of this large crowd of VIPs and asked her friend Toby to come with her and help.
One of the members of the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai was DJing, and about an hour into his set, after drinking a few doses of liquid courage, Bossi decided it was her turn to DJ. Toby went up to him, pretended to be the event producer, and insisted she needed to DJ now. Eventually, he agreed.
Bossi remembered her USBs but not her headphones, so she jacked his, although they didn't work. For about 45 minutes, she was the belle of the ball, helming the decks. After, she hob-nobbed with music producers in the crowd. Eventually, Mogwai and the actual event producers realized what she had done and had security kick her and Toby out.
But this was just the beginning of the dynamic duo of Stella and Toby plotting their takeover of the Berlin—and now global—techno scene. She also explains in the episode that Toby filmed her first social media video, outside of Kater Blau, that began her creative social media club kid shenanigans. She adds that while he is a friend first, he is more or less her manager, although technically a lot more, and has played a significant role in helping her grow.
Luckily, now they don't have to kick anyone off the decks to get gigs. And soon, for those of us outside of Europe, we can catch her banging sound and wild party stateside.
